Due to this being a WMG page, '''all spoilers are off'. You Have Been Warned.
- Growing more and more likely, as of Episode 26.
- Confirmed in Episode 35.
- "And with that, you were born to your Beom father and human mother... No, to be exact, she was from the Gom tribe..."
This seems to point to the Gom being either another type of beasts, a different clan of Beom, or a mix of either one with humans - either way, the people the wielder of the Sword of Death belonged to. This could mean that some or even all humans in this setting having at least some of this mix between humans and Gom in their blood, which would fit with the increasingly recurring theme of humans being equally able of cruelty and kindness as Beom and the Beom having sympathetic reasons for the original war. What would set the main characters apart from the rest is their inherent drive to help others and their common past life in the wielder of the Sword of Death, as well as some way they've ended up carrying on his will of bringing peace to the land.
- That's highly likely. I see your point there...
- Confirmed, but not quite. As shown by Cein's recounting of the events, none of the people present (at least none from the two main clans) were humans as they exist in the present. While there are mentions of other clans, these were two different clans with animal traits that coexisted peacefully and maintained order (Tabae being a mix) until the Beom started attacking the others. After the war, the Gom lost their powers.
- Nope. He's from a race of monsters that feed on human blood, and might have been the one that caused the original war.
- As of Episode 26, this looks very likely, as the discord sowed by the Hunter app is outright stated to not have been the first time he's done this.
- Half-right, half-wrong. His species (or possibly he himself) impersonated Tabae to cause the war, but the only one to find out about this at the time was Tabae, who died moments afterwards. Everyone else thought Tabae waged war against the Beom.
But then there's his sword. He swore to bring peace to the land, and this was, as we know, somehow passed on to the blade. While it's extremely powerful against Beom, it also can't achieve peace by being used by one person alone. Real peace also needs violence to stop through true understanding and growth from past mistakes. It needs enough people brought together for a common goal, a team... through a shared past life.
The half-Beom Zeha finding and using the sword allows him to defend people against Beom, but also brings him to Hwan and leads to Dogeon joining. The Beom brow (which shows past lives and is likely an artifact connected to the sword, tying to knowledge of the mistakes that led to today) brings Cein to the team. The other two members' powers awaken through acts of kindness between humans and Beom. So in a way, the members represent both the original sword wielder's goals and his being forced to use violence means for survival, and the possibility of change for the better.
- His dying wish at the very last moment was for his soul to protect Sin-Si, so... kinda?
- They did see an important memory, but it still didn't help them very much.
- Episode 35 provides them a key memory that might lead them closer to this, but we're yet to see them where it really leads them.
- Heavily implied in Episode 24. Cein says that the CHAKHO used to all be the warrior Tabae. Whether Tabae started the cycle or not is still a mystery.
- Episode 35 shows Tabae's dying wish was for his soul to protect Sin-Si, which seems to imply this.
- The revelations in Episode 25 about the other species that were banished by Tabae, with the Duduri looking very non-human make this more unlikely, though (as seen with Zeha and Hwanwoong retaining human appearances) not impossible. We don't know how humans came to look like they do in the present, after all...
- Much less likely given later revelations about Hwanwoong's species.
After banishing the Beom (actually an unfair decision or one made based on incomplete information), Tabae lost his ties to half of his roots and was left without his closest comrade (who, as we already seen in present-day appearances, is both very intelligent and much more reasonable than Tabae's version suggests) to maintain peace. This affected very negatively his decision-making, and his rule.
After the war had already resulted in atrocities being commited on both sides, the people had already seen too much bloodshed for any hope of stability, and this "peace" simply could not last. Tabae lost control over the situation and became more and more tyrannical due to being unable to solve anything (if not by force). The ensuing conflicts in the land led to every single other clan being banished but Tabae's own.
- Turns out he was impersonated and murdered by a third party, who was the one who truly started the war.
Why would they all be so greedy and corrupt? Yisal hired them to make sure as little money as possible slips out the door.
- I may have ignored a crucial fact. Hwanwoong wants the hunters to kill Beom for personal reasons.
... and it has to do with the other soldiers who fought on the latter's side.
In the flashbacks of Episode 24, we see other background combatants fight along with Tabae in the original war that have a tad too much detail in their designs to not be important. While there have been random hunters that were drawn with very distinct designs as well despite being little more than cameos, there are other factors that make this aspect important.
From Episode 25, we know that Tabae banished all the other tribes until only the Gom were left. However, we still don't know how the Gom came to look like humans in the present despite being the only ones left. In Hupo's flashback at the end of Episode 24 we see a figure that seems to be referred to as Tabae, but has a slightly darker hair colornote . We also know that the Chakho, unlike other people, all share a single past life, which in-universe is a bit strange, isn't it?
This is admittedly a wild theory, but assuming that the banishing of the other tribes took place after the flashbacks where we see Tabae with light brown hair, it could be possible that those characters in the background are the others members' real past lives. At some point, during or after the war, Tabae became desperate and/or less moral, and with Hupo as an enemy he needed more power, so he turned to his most loyal soldiers, who had similar skills as the Chakho today. Somehow, he either created an unbreakable bond with his most loyal soldiers (who were not necessarily Gom) that would trascend lifetimes, or, more cynically, absorbed them into himself. The latter would have led to their individual traits being mixed with Tabae's, leading into the human appearance we know today.
This would make Zeha the most directly connected to the original, while the others drew their specific abilities from those other iterations, who may or may not have been directly connected to the Beom war.
Their eventual mix would be another explanation for how humans look in the present.
Narae's death seems to be a sore spot of sorts for Bulti when Zahu questions him about her, given his reaction. It's possible that Bulti feels "betrayed" in more ways than one: not just because Narae fell in love with a human and turned against him, but because Bulti had feelings for her. Bulti being Bulti, he lashed out at the couple out of both entitlement towards her and hatred towards humans. He either killed her out of rage, or accidentally killed her when he tried to attack Jooan and she stood in the way. Either way, he justifies it to himself and others as necessary, as she betrayed all of the Beom.
Given his relatively pragmatic attitude and how nicely and easily he goaded Zeha into hunting Beom, it's possible that Haru (while not being a villainous character, given who he's based on) is hiding crucial information that he's not telling the others (or at least omitting it for as long as possible) because of whatever mission he was entrusted with as a guardian deity. That is, if he's not completely out of the loop on certain things.
- In episode 24, Cein tells the others the story of the original wielder of the Sword of Death. Dogeon asks a very logical question: why would the Beom betray Tabae and wage such a reckless war in the first place? Haru (who is sweating) immediately poses another, slightly more redundant question about whether they are fighting Beom today because of their past life, which was a possibility already posed by Cein himself.
- In episode 33, he interrupts a serious discussion about whether Beom can be reasoned with to achieve a peaceful solution. He says it's because his favorite drama is starting, but his expression beforehand (or lack thereof) could be interpreted in two different ways: as simply a part of the gag of Haru caring about his drama above everything else... or as an indication that there's something he's not saying or doesn't want to discuss.
Also note that "Beom" comes from "tiger", and "Chakho" comes from the real tiger hunters employed by King Sejong to control the tiger populace when it became a danger to the people of Joseon. However, tigers have historically been a major symbol for Korea (which at one point was known as the "Land of Tigers"), being highly respected and heavily present in mythology until they were driven into extinction. Thus, in this story, the Beom are not just random beasts. They were always key part of the land, belong here just like the humans, and are meant to come back and coexist with the others.
So, what will happen is that as the Chakho dig deeper into the original conflict between Tabae and the other tribes, they might find themselves clashing with Hwanwoong and/or siding with some or all Beom (possibly against Hwanwoong) in order to find a better solution, only for this to be weaponized against them. Zeha, Jooan and Hosu's ties with the Beom, as well as the members' powers in general, will be exploited against the group to frame them as "Beom in disguise" and turn the entire public against them.
This would also fit with BTS' own history as a group, in which several kinds of derision as "try-hard idols" and false narratives (most notably the disproven accusations of inflated album sales numbers or sajaegi back in 2015-2016) were directed at them back when they were just a small company group (some of which continues nowadays).
Not only that, but the fact that he's a likely reference to Hwanung
could mean he was right there and involved with the war in more ways than one, from founding the city, to his relationship to the Sindansu, to (as shown with the bear and tiger myth) the Gom gaining the appearance they have in the present, making him truly a "father" to the city itself.
- Episode 35 shows a creature that outright caused the war between Gom and Beom and may or may not be (if not an ancestor) Hwanwoong himself.
His status as a deity does not contradict this. After all, if you take the Dagun myth this story is heavily referencing, Hwanwoong is a reference to Hwanung, the Heaven Prince, who descended from the heavens to rule on Earth and found Sin-Si. If anything, this could point to both characters being some sort of divine... or none of them actually being that, at least not in the traditional sense.
The reveals of Episode 35 leave one question: if the Tabae we saw waging war against the Beom was an impostor, why did we still see flashbacks of Tabae banishing Hupo in a first person point of view?
A possibility is that the impostor carried on having descendants (with possibly all the Fridge Horror that impersonating Tabae implies), which resulted in the Gom losing their powers and becoming the humans we know today.
Alternatively...
Tabae was shown to suddenly wake up tied down, with no idea of how he got there. It's quite possible that, in a Call-Forward to Zeha's own incident with Hupo at the beginning of the series, Tabae was manipulated/mind-controlled into doing some things until "Snowflake" gained enough power to gain a human form (possibly through consuming as human blood as possible and framing the Beom for it). Once it did, Tabae outlived his usefulness.
